Writing Emergency Instructions for Your Practice (Intro Session)

Writing Emergency Instructions for Your Practice - Two Session Workshop

Presenter: Melinda Salzman

Category 1 | 4 Ethics CEUs

If you suddenly were to become incapacitated due to injury, illness or death, who would contact your clients?  What arrangements would need to be made for your clients and your place of work? Just as it is important for an individual to write a will to protect personal assets and provide for his or her dependents, it is also prudent for a clinician to prepare for an untimely or unanticipated inability to carry out their functions at work.

We will discuss all aspects of this project, including identifying and recruiting individuals to serve as your "professional executors," organizing your treatment records so they can be accessed, providing access to your computer, telephone and banking, and distributing these instructions.

This class will involve two sessions in order to provide the information, structure and support most people require to complete the process. Participants must attend both sessions in order to earn CEU's. Teaching modalities will include discussion and writing assignments. Between the two sessions, participants will begin drafting their Emergency Instructions. Inevitably, writing these instructions brings up related tasks, such as organizing your records so they can be accessed.

The purpose of this course is to help clinicians anticipate the needs of their clients and their business should such an emergency arise.

Between the two meetings, you will begin writing instructions for your "professional executors," covering topics such as how to contact your current clients, gain access to and retain your treatment records, and oversee billing and banking.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify and describe legal and ethical issues pertaining to an unplanned interruption in the clinician’s practice 
2. Address ethical principles regarding confidentiality in informing patients of the interruption 
3. Apply ethical principles in selecting individuals to carry out necessary clinical and business tasks 
4. Apply records retention requirements as mandated by the therapist’s jurisdiction 
5. Recruit suitable individuals to carry out necessary clinical and business tasks in a professional manner 
6. Draft instructions which spell out procedures these individuals are to follow and provide detailed descriptions of how to find needed information